Goldfielders had a shaky start to Wednesday morning when a magnitude 4.6 earthquake hit 30km west of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. We spoke to Geoscience Australia to bust some common earthquake myths that move about when the earth does.

"You could say that this event is related, it's not an aftershock but it's certainly in the same fault belt and in geological time very close to the one four years ago and can be considered something that has been triggered by that magnitude 5 four years back," Mr Jaksa said.

Does mining activity cause earthquakes?

No, the minerals we mine are generally caused by earthquakes in the first place, hence the areas are prone to seismic events.

"It's the other way around; we have mining because of earthquakes," Mr Jaksa said.

"Minerals that us humans like to dig out of the ground and use for our own benefit are along faults, they are there because when an earthquake occurs there is generally a flow of water or liquid that interacts with the rocks and over many millions of years forms minerals.

"So it's not unusual that you will find earthquakes near mines because mines are near faults and interestingly enough, so are people."

People like to settle near water, Mr Jaksa said, which tends to flow down fault lines and as a result many cities across the world sit on soft or sedimentary rock which shakes like jelly when an earthquake hits.

But that's not the case in the Goldfields.

"Kalgoorlie is not sitting on that sort of stuff, it's on pretty hard rock... so the types of earthquakes you get in Kalgoorlie are like big bangs," he said.

"You'll hear a big bang first and then you'll feel a bit of shaking and that's what we understood was felt from our 80-odd reports we got."

Do the Goldfields experience an excessive amount of earthquakes?

Not really, earthquakes in the Goldfields are known as a "standard event".

"In the earthquake hazard map for Australia that we produce, Kalgoorlie is considered a little bit more of an active area than other parts of Australia, it's certainly known that that fault region is active, equivalently active to the Flinders Rangers or those places in Victoria.

"So it's not what we would call uncommon for that region, it's quite a standard event."

Mr Jaksa said we can expect more of the same in terms of seismic activity.

The lesson, he said, is to make sure our buildings are structurally sound to withstand earthquakes.

Isn't a 4.6 magnitude earthquake not that much weaker than a magnitude 5?

A magnitude 4.6 earthquake is about 10 times smaller than a magnitude 5.

As an earthquake goes up by one magnitude, it is considered 30 times larger.

"The magnitude scale is logarithmic, so you go up by log 10 and unfortunately it's not related to energy it's more related to the old Richter scale of amplitude of the seismic wave, in terms of energy as you go up one magnitude you're actually 30 times larger.

"So for example the magnitude 5 (in 2010)although the epicentre was really under Boulder, this one was about 30km to the west so it's a good 10 times smaller and the distance away is obviously going to dissipate the seismic energy over that distance.

"So a magnitude 5 is equivalent to an atomic blast, a magnitude 6 is 30 times bigger, a magnitude 7 is 30 times bigger than a 6 and by the time you get to a magnitude 9 you've got the equivalent of a something like 3-4 million atomic blasts of energy being released at once."

Aftershocks

Mr Jaksa said there have been about 20 aftershocks since the 4.6 magnitude quake on Wednesday.

It is an estimate number because Geoscience Australia is unable to pick up earthquakes less than a magnitude 2 because of the density of the area.

The event which might have been felt was a 2.4 magnitude aftershock was registered at 5:37am on Thursday morning.